Address

Dr. Jana Zech

Phone:

Email:

Room:

007

Main Focus

As lab manager she is facilitating the labs of the Department of Archaeology. Jana is in charge of student and postdoctoral student training in the use of the equipment in the stable isotope lab, and health and safety protocol within the laboratory of the department of archaeology. She is responsible for the maintenance and day-to-day running of state of the art Gasbench-irMS, TC/EA and EA-irMS, GC-MSD and GC-C-irMS, as well as other equipment used in the preparation of archaeological samples for stable isotope analysis. She is committed to developing and applying novel stable isotope methodologies (such as compound specific isotope analyses of dD and 13C) in the study of the human past. In particular, Jana facilitates the use of isotope methodologies in the study of intra- and inter- societal differences in prehistoric and historical human diets, the development of detailed human stable isotope ecologies, and the development of new, detailed palaeoenvironmental proxies of immediate relevance to studies of past human responses to climatic and environmental change.

Curriculum Vitae

Jana received her Master in Geography at the Technical University Dresden, Germany in 2006, where she applied U/Pb dating of zircons using Laser-ICP-MS. In 2009 she received her PhD from the University of Bern, Switzerland in palaeogeoecology. For her PhD she focused on landscape and climate reconstruction applying 10Be surface exposure dating. As a visiting scientist at Brown University, USA, she focused on alkenone-paleotemperature determination and foraminifera determination for estimating past ocean productivity in the eastern equatorial Pacific. At the University of Bern she ran the stable isotope laboratory as well as the cosmogenic nuclide laboratory of the biogeochemistry and palaeoclimate research group of the Department of Geography. She has supervised BSc, MSc and PhD students in lab work and research with the research focus on climate and landscape change since the last ice age in South America and Eurasia applying biomarker and stable isotope analyses (compound specific dD, 13C), as well as 10Be surface exposure dating in South America and Eurasia.